Aleph

We announced back in November 2012 that we would be developing a new SUNCAT interface and have posted a number of items about the development along the way. Now, following the positive feedback on the new interface from the last survey, we would like to retire the original SUNCAT interface at the end of next month on Friday 26th September.

The original interface was went live as a pilot service in early 2005, and proved to be popular for it’s simplicity and ease of use, but we hope you agree that the new interface represents a significant improvement and modernisation of the SUNCAT service.

We would be grateful if you could move to using the new interface, if you haven’t already, as soon as possible and also if you could update any bookmarks accordingly. The address for the homepage of the new service remains as http://suncat.ac.uk.

One feature which will no longer be available is the Google search gadget (http://www.google.com/ig/directory?synd=open&url=http://www.suncat.ac.uk/ig/suncat-search.xml). We understand that Google will not support this in the long term so we have not updated this to work with the new interface. If, however, there is sufficient interest we would be happy to investigate providing an alternative as a future development.

Please also contact us as soon as possible via the EDINA Helpdesk at edina@ed.ac.uk if you have any queries or concerns about this or the switch off of the original interface in general.

Two members of the SUNCAT team attended the Aleph Cataloguing Module subgroup meeting at the British Library, St. Pancras on the 28th April. (Aleph is the LMS that SUNCAT runs on.)
It was a very useful day, encompassing a presentation on RDA (Resource Description and Access) and one on the British Library’s batch loading processes.
The discussion following RDA raised many pertinent questions, including how Aleph will handle the changes to the cataloguing rules, which will become more FRBR-ised (FRBR = Function Requirements for Bibliographic Records). How records will be retrospectively converted to work in a FRBR-ised environment remains a question that is currently unanswered. RDA is a drastic change from the current bibliographic description rules; so much of a change that the Library of Congress’ Future of Bibliographic Control Working Group has recommended that work on RDA be suspended until further testing of the FRBR model can be carried out.
The debate provided much food for thought for SUNCAT: for example, how will SUNCAT display records that are following RDA alongside records that are in MARC21?
Regarding the presentation on the British Library’s batch loading processes, it was interesting to note that the British Library converts its data in a similar way to the method used by SUNCAT for processing data from its contributing libraries.

The next meeting will be held in a years’ time. By then, the layout of RDA will be more established, so there should be a better idea of how it will display in different LMS, and how the cataloguing workflow will be altered. The theory is sound; the implementation needs further work.

SUNCAT is the Serials Union Catalogue for the UK. Visit the service at http://www.suncat.ac.uk.